Junk food. So delicious. So fun. So… controversial? We attempt to define junk food and, well, kinda fail. Because in the end, all food exists on a nutritional continuum and where you draw your line has to do with personal factors that cause us to land in all different places. So where does this conversation net out? We share where each of us lands, why we land there (including acknowledging our hypocrisies), and how we talk to our kids about junk food in hopes that exposing it all gives you food for thought — you know, the nourishing kind.

Pizza is a beloved family food, and rightly so. It’s inexpensive, kid-loved, and an effective vehicle for getting picky eaters to eat more vegetables. It’s also readily available: Nearly every town in America has pizza delivery within a phone’s reach. While 1-800-pizza might be faster, we think DIY pizza has it’s merits, and in this episode we breakdown when and where it might be worth making pizza at home from scratch.

Should you shortcut the dough? Skip homemade sauce or make a rustic version? And is mozzarella cheese the only way to go? We cover it all — or most of it, anyway — in the next 60 minutes.

This week’s episode is made possible by Cabot Cheese. Visit cabotcheese.coop for more information.

Coffee fuels our parenting. We drink it hot, cold, and re-warmed in the microwave, and the kids are watching. How do our habits impact our kids’ interest in coffee and caffeine? And what about our collective obsession with Starbucks? The kids are right there with us and Starbucks has answers in the way of frappes, flavored steam milk, and unicorn sips.

This week, Stacie’s 12-year-old son joins us to share what he knows about caffeine, his coffee drink consumption, and why he and his peers are so fanatically interest in (crazy sugary) Frappuccinos.

Tweens are much like toddlers in many ways that mirror general child development— including picky eating tendencies.

The combination of pickiness and growing autonomy can be disastrous for a parent who cares if their rapidly growing tween, gets food that actually nourishes them. School lunch is the hardest meal of the day, since it's so thoroughly out of our hands. This week we share the trials, tribulations and tips for making sure your tween eats a healthy lunch all school year long.

Being a fully functioning human at 6 am is hard. As much as the idea that “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” has been drilled into our collective consciousness, we just cannot deal with having to feed ourselves and our kids a healthy, scratch meal every morning. That’s why, if you ask us, make-ahead breakfasts are critical to our kitchen game plan. Plus, they assuage that parent guilt. Listen for all the tips and recipes to get morning started off right — and quickly too.

We’re kicking off our back-to-school series with this energy: There is no time, we feel side swiped by back-to-school preparations (even though we’ve known for months that it was coming), and OMG why are there still 10 million more things to do?!

So, yea, in this episode we’re taking a moment to stop, breathe, accept the madness for the inevitable reality that it is, and taking stock of what still works — and doesn’t work — for the year of packing school lunches ahead.

Whatever you call them — Popsicles, freeze pops, ice pops, freezies, Otter Pops — easy homemade popsicle recipes never fail to save the day. And when you know how to make them nutritious, the sky’s the limit. With expert tips from Sarah Bond, author of For The Love of Popsicles, we share everything you need to know to make Popsicles sweet, healthy, and good for breakfast. Or dinner, too, if you’re Meghan!

Trigger warning: This episode contains discussion of weight loss, experiences with disordered eating, and other sensitive topics related to dieting and diet culture.

We’re kicking off the summer season with bikini body talk! When we recently confided in each other that we feel guilty —and even like bad feminists — for wanting to lose weight, we realized it was time to talk. In this week’s episode, we chat about body positivity, Intuitive Eating, Healthy At Every Size, and the anti-diet movement (or are they movements?), and how we reconcile each with our privilege, desires, and motherhood.

In talking to MS, RD, and cookbook author, Katie Morford, about her book Prep: The Essential College Cookbook, we realized that it's more than a quintessential collection of delicious recipes that kids can make as they begin cooking for themselves. It's a fantastic, simple guide to home cooking for anyone who wants or needs to learn how to feed themselves and others too. We talk about the basic cooking skills we all need to master and the recipes that help us master them well.

As we begin to wind down season two, we share the recipes we’re cooking and think you should be cooking too. These are our lifesavers, the back-pocket recipes saving us from take-out night after night. We share the recipes with notes on what makes each great and how every one can be adapted to suit your family, schedule, and budget too. This is our cheat sheet. And now it’s yours too.

One of the questions we’re most frequently asked is how to get kids to eat vegetables. The answer is easy: Make ‘em taste good. Turning that answer into a reality at your dinner table… not so much. In this episode, we invite toddler mama and anti-diet registered dietician Min Kwon to talk about how to make vegetables appealing to kids (and grown ups too).

Inspired by our IRL time together (including a sleepover), we dig into sleepover dinner ideas and ways to make cooking for a gaggle of kids easier. We also touch on “Mommy Juice” culture, because who doesn’t joke about escaping to a big ol’ glass of wine after taking care of kids all day — and into night. Well, lots of people, including sober parents. So is the whole “Mommy Juice” trope problematic, or are we taking things too seriously? This time, we have a strong opinion. #SorryNotSorry